A Table for All: Feeding Utah's Culture

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"A Table For All: Feeding Utah's Culture" anthem video

A Table for All: Feeding Utah's Culture

Food gives us an opportunity to slow down, savor, teach or learn something, celebrate people, moments and life. Food is royalty when it comes to breaking barriers, because diners don’t need to speak the same language to communicate how good food tastes or how to prepare it. Food shows everyone that cultures, flavors, textures can mingle and co-exist in positive ways.

As Utah continues to evolve, it may just be food that grows us most. Whether you come here to live, visit or are simply passing through, we welcome everyone to join a delicious and vibrant global conversation centered around food, a well-rooted conversation that elevates all of our lives far beyond the plate.

The Goals

The Utah Office of Tourism’s video series aims to help shift the lens in visitors’ perception of the state. “A Table For All” invites travelers to hear the voices of Utah’s thriving multicultural community as part of a larger urban advertising campaign.

The campaign’s main goal: Launch three video stories, along with an anthem video encapsulating the energy and voices within the community. The videos are anchored with web stories to provide context and focus. The entire content initiative serves as an invitation to visitors as it highlights Utah’s thriving multicultural food culture.

The project was conceived in 2019, with pre-production interviews beginning before COVID-19 shutdowns in March 2020. But as the pandemic unfolded, the project’s goals and focus became even more urgently focused as local businesses suffered financially from lengthy shutdowns. Data suggests that Utah’s urban businesses were hardest hit by pandemic losses. In Salt Lake County for example, the transient room tax was down 48 percent in 2020 in comparison to the previous year.

The Approach

+ We considered this video-led initiative as a meaningful, creative role for a state government agency focused on tourism to play in encouraging local business recovery.

+ We created artistically shot and tightly edited short videos, aimed to shift perception and understanding of Utah’s metropolitan Wasatch Front region as an inspiring blend of culture, flavor and texture.

+ Two videos focus on restaurants that serve as community gathering places. We feature Ogden’s Tona Sushi, led by architect-turned-chef, Tony Chen, who with Tina, his wife and business partner, serves artistic diversity with every plate. Then there’s Salt Lake City’s Laziz Kitchen, helmed by Moudi Sbeity, a prominent queer activist. He’s a Middle Eastern evacuee turned Utah transplant who learned his mother’s traditional Lebanese recipes over Skype.

+ The series was anchored by an anthem video about the International Rescue Committee’s SPICE Incubator Kitchen and New Roots agricultural training programs, introducing the message of “Feeding Utah’s Culture” and inviting deeper engagement.

+ The videos were embedded in an introductory story about Utah’s multicultural food culture on VisitUtah.com.

+ The series was promoted with targeted paid distribution tactics to build awareness and motivate engagements in native advertising, YouTube pre-roll, social media and email newsletters.

+ An urban regional audience was targeted through native article placement on Nativo and YouTube.

+ The series was also promoted through organic and paid social including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

+ As part of the series, UOT also built a photography library with more than 200 inclusive photographs featuring LGBTQ+ and BIPOC restaurant owners and successful refugee restaurant and farming programs.

Outcomes

Changing perception is a long game, and can be difficult to measure early in a campaign. To demonstrate that shift with this video series, we targeted distribution and upfront engagement by measuring video completion rate (VCR) and post-impression web traffic to demonstrate momentum. The “Table for All” series is showing early success.

Native + YouTube:

We targeted an urban regional audience through media partners Nativo and YouTube. While our office typically focuses on engagement over impressions, for a campaign tackling perception, we are also noting the 1.36 million Nativo and 734,000 views on the YouTube videos in the first month. These headlines and images plant the seed of Utah’s lesser-explored blend of culture and flavors.

Long-form videos on both Nativo and YouTube are driving the strongest post-impression traffic, indicating viewers who are compelled to follow through by browsing additional content on visitutah.com and partner sites. For the YouTube pre-roll, the view rate for all four :15 teasers and all four long-form videos exceeds 41, with two :15 teasers hitting 15.8 percent and 57.9 percent.

Nativo results are equally inspiring. The two :15 teasers (“Salt Lake City’s Laziz Kitchen” and “A Table for All”) eclipsed 38 percent completed views over their benchmark of 21 percent. The long-form “A Table for All” anthem hit Nativo’s 8 percent benchmark. That’s 8 percent tuning in for more than two minutes!

Social Media:

+ More than 1.1m impressions and more than 3.8k engagements (reactions, comments, shares, saves) across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

+ More than 12.1k clicks from social posts to video landing page on VisitUtah.com

The Team

Production House: Local Studio

Director: Sean Slobodan, Local Studio

Producer: Sandra Salvas, Utah Office of Tourism

Director of Photography: Bryce Van Leuven, Local Studio

Pro/Post Sound Mixer: Chris Burton

Additional Sound: Keith Baskett

Editing: Bryce Van Leuven and Sean Slobodan, Local Studio

Gaffer: Roman Lah